Back in January, Campbell River, British Columbia, resident Jo Jo Yarjau picked up her cat and noticed something a little different.

“She was acting kind of strange, and I picked her up, and her belly felt kind of funny,” the owner said. “It wasn’t a big, fluffy belly that it used to be.”

Instead, underneath Yarjau’s cat was a patch of bare, pink skin. Of course, being an outdoor cat, it was possible that the hair may have come off during some kind of kitty misadventure, so she wrote it off as probably just a weird occurrence. But the cat has since been randomly shaved on four other occasions, and now the family is getting worried, because the work is becoming more and more sinister.

Every time it happens, Yarjau says a different part of the cat is missing hair when it comes home. But the story gets even stranger: The owner adds that after warning other residents in her area of the shaving, they, too, said they have had similar experiences with their pets. So, it seems a hair-cutting bandit is on the loose in Campbell River.

Keeping the cat inside seems like an obvious solution, but Yarjau says her pet is too old for that, adding that she’s really hoping the person or people responsible stop.